Heart Attacks Strike Young Women Harder Than Men

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Women make up one-quarter of heart attack patients among people
who are relatively young, but fare worse afterward than their
male counterparts — women have longer hospital stays on average,
and they are more likely than men to die in the hospital after a
heart attack, according to a new study.

The researchers also found that over the past decade, heart
attack hospitalization rates for
younger patients (under age 55) have not declined as quickly
as they have for patients in older age groups.

To look at trends in heart attacks among relatively young people,
the researchers analyzed data from more than 230,000
hospitalizations for heart attacks in patients ages 30 to 54. The
data was reported in a U.S. national database from 2001 to 2010.

They found that the number of hospitalizations for heart attacks
among women increased from 28,681 (which means 56 per 100,000
people) in 2001, to 31,777 (61 per 100,000) in 2010.

The researchers also found that women hospitalized after a heart
attack had higher rates of dying in the hospital than men did.
However, women's mortality rates decreased from 3.3 percent to
2.3 percent over the 10 years of the study, whereas men's
mortality rates remained unchanged, at around 2 percent,
according to the study published today (July 21) in the Journal
of the American College of Cardiology.

In a previous study looking at people older than 65, the
researchers found a 20 percent drop in hospitalization rates for
heart attacks between 2001 and 2010. The new study shows that
younger patients didn't experience the same decline in
hospitalization rates.

"This trend suggests we need to raise awareness of the importance
of controlling cardiovascular risk factors — like diabetes, high
blood pressure and smoking — in younger patients," said study
researcher Dr. Aakriti Gupta, an internal medicine resident at
Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

However, the researchers noted that because heart disease at
younger ages is more strongly influenced by genetic factors,
changes in lifestyle factors might not lower hospitalization
rates as much as they have in older people.

Among all patients in the study, there were increases in the
rates of medical conditions, including high blood pressure and
diabetes. The researchers found that
women with heart attacks were more likely than male patients
to have other medical conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes
and heart failure.

The findings suggest that younger women may benefit even more
than men from aggressive efforts to control their
risk factors for heart disease, which include early
identification and treatment of high blood pressure, high
cholesterol, obesity, smoking and diabetes, the researchers said.